The Essays of Michel de Montaigne, by Michel de Montaigne

Chapter 26

That it is Folly to Measure Truth and Error by Our Own Capacity

’Tis not, perhaps, without reason, that we attribute facility of belief and easiness of persuasion
to simplicity and ignorance: for I fancy I have heard belief compared to the impression of a seal upon the soul, which
by how much softer and of less resistance it is, is the more easy to be impressed upon.

By how much the soul is more empty and without counterpoise, with so much greater facility it yields under the
weight of the first persuasion. And this is the reason that children, the common people, women, and sick folks, are
most apt to be led by the ears. But then, on the other hand, ’tis a foolish presumption to slight and condemn all
things for false that do not appear to us probable; which is the ordinary vice of such as fancy themselves wiser than
their neighbours. I was myself once one of those; and if I heard talk of dead folks walking, of prophecies,
enchantments, witchcrafts, or any other story I had no mind to believe:

I presently pitied the poor people that were abused by these follies. Whereas I now find, that I myself was to be
pitied as much, at least, as they; not that experience has taught me anything to alter my former opinions, though my
curiosity has endeavoured that way; but reason has instructed me, that thus resolutely to condemn anything for false
and impossible, is arrogantly and impiously to circumscribe and limit the will of God, and the power of our mother
nature, within the bounds of my own capacity, than which no folly can be greater. If we give the names of monster and
miracle to everything our reason cannot comprehend, how many are continually presented before our eyes? Let us but
consider through what clouds, and as it were groping in the dark, our teachers lead us to the knowledge of most of the
things about us; assuredly we shall find that it is rather custom than knowledge that takes away their
strangeness —

The novelty, rather than the greatness of things, tempts us to inquire into their causes. We are to judge with more
reverence, and with greater acknowledgment of our own ignorance and infirmity, of the infinite power of nature. How
many unlikely things are there testified by people worthy of faith, which, if we cannot persuade ourselves absolutely
to believe, we ought at least to leave them in suspense; for, to condemn them as impossible, is by a temerarious
presumption to pretend to know the utmost bounds of possibility. Did we rightly understand the difference betwixt the
impossible and the unusual, and betwixt that which is contrary to the order and course of nature and contrary to the
common opinion of men, in not believing rashly, and on the other hand, in not being too incredulous, we should observe
the rule of ‘Ne quid nimis’ enjoined by Chilo.

When we find in Froissart, that the Comte de Foix knew in Bearn the defeat of John, king of Castile, at Jubera the
next day after it happened, and the means by which he tells us he came to do so, we may be allowed to be a little merry
at it, as also at what our annals report, that Pope Honorius, the same day that King Philip Augustus died at Mantes,
performed his public obsequies at Rome, and commanded the like throughout Italy, the testimony of these authors not
being, perhaps, of authority enough to restrain us. But what if Plutarch, besides several examples that he produces out
of antiquity, tells us, he knows of certain knowledge, that in the time of Domitian, the news of the battle lost by
Antony in Germany was published at Rome, many days’ journey from thence, and dispersed throughout the whole world, the
same day it was fought; and if Caesar was of opinion, that it has often happened, that the report has preceded the
incident, shall we not say, that these simple people have suffered themselves to be deceived with the vulgar, for not
having been so clear-sighted as we? Is there anything more delicate, more clear, more sprightly; than Pliny’s judgment,
when he is pleased to set it to work? Anything more remote from vanity? Setting aside his learning, of which I make
less account, in which of these excellences do any of us excel him? And yet there is scarce a young schoolboy that does
not convict him of untruth, and that pretends not to instruct him in the progress of the works of nature. When we read
in Bouchet the miracles of St. Hilary’s relics, away with them: his authority is not sufficient to deprive us of the
liberty of contradicting him; but generally and offhand to condemn all suchlike stories, seems to me a singular
impudence. That great St. Augustin’ testifies to have seen a blind child recover sight upon the relics of St. Gervasius
and St. Protasius at Milan; a woman at Carthage cured of a cancer, by the sign of the cross made upon her by a woman
newly baptized; Hesperius, a familiar friend of his, to have driven away the spirits that haunted his house, with a
little earth of the sepulchre of our Lord; which earth, being also transported thence into the church, a paralytic to
have there been suddenly cured by it; a woman in a procession, having touched St. Stephen’s shrine with a nosegay, and
rubbing her eyes with it, to have recovered her sight, lost many years before; with several other miracles of which he
professes himself to have been an eyewitness: of what shall we excuse him and the two holy bishops, Aurelius and
Maximinus, both of whom he attests to the truth of these things? Shall it be of ignorance, simplicity, and facility; or
of malice and imposture? Is any man now living so impudent as to think himself comparable to them in virtue, piety,
learning, judgment, or any kind of perfection?

’Tis a presumption of great danger and consequence, besides the absurd temerity it draws after it, to contemn what
we do not comprehend. For after, according to your fine understanding, you have established the limits of truth and
error, and that, afterwards, there appears a necessity upon you of believing stranger things than those you have
contradicted, you are already obliged to quit your limits. Now, that which seems to me so much to disorder our
consciences in the commotions we are now in concerning religion, is the Catholics dispensing so much with their belief.
They fancy they appear moderate, and wise, when they grant to their opponents some of the articles in question; but,
besides that they do not discern what advantage it is to those with whom we contend, to begin to give ground and to
retire, and how much this animates our enemy to follow his blow: these articles which they select as things
indifferent, are sometimes of very great importance. We are either wholly and absolutely to submit ourselves to the
authority of our ecclesiastical polity, or totally throw off all obedience to it: ’tis not for us to determine what and
how much obedience we owe to it. And this I can say, as having myself made trial of it, that having formerly taken the
liberty of my own swing and fancy, and omitted or neglected certain rules of the discipline of our Church, which seemed
to me vain and strange coming afterwards to discourse of it with learned men, I have found those same things to be
built upon very good and solid ground and strong foundation; and that nothing but stupidity and ignorance makes us
receive them with less reverence than the rest. Why do we not consider what contradictions we find in our own
judgments; how many things were yesterday articles of our faith, that to-day appear no other than fables? Glory and
curiosity are the scourges of the soul; the last prompts us to thrust our noses into everything, the other forbids us
to leave anything doubtful and undecided.

1 “As the scale of the balance must give way to the weight that
presses it down, so the mind yields to demonstration.” — Cicero, Acad., ii. 12.

3 “Weary of the sight, now no one deigns to look up to heaven’s
lucid temples.”— Lucretius, ii. 1037. The text has ‘statiate videnai’

4 Lucretius, ii. 1032. The sense of the passage is in the
preceding sentence.

5 “A little river seems to him, who has never seen a larger
river, a mighty stream; and so with other things — a tree, a man — anything appears greatest to him that never knew a
greater.”— Idem, vi. 674.

6 “Things grow familiar to men’s minds by being often seen; so
that they neither admire nor are they inquisitive about things they daily see.”— Cicero, De Natura Deor., lib. ii.
38.

7 “Who, though they should adduce no reason, would convince me
with their authority alone.”— Cicero, Tusc. Quaes, i. 21.